uncommonly feeble and random thoughts

It all started so wonderfully... saw this brisket flat at Whole Foods and loved the marbling: Fired up the sous vide, cut the slab in half because I didn't have a big enough bag, and put two bags o' beef in the cooler. Then used the sous vide balls for the first time. Since this was to be a 24 hour cook at 68 degrees C, I anticipated a lot of evaporation: I had to throw in 2 qts of water in the morning. By 3 p.m. it was time to take the boys out of the soup: The white flecks are the ceiling lights, reflecting. But the color is true. They need some TLC! Hey Billy Bones, triage needed here!! Well of course it rained. I was grilling, right? Voila! What, no mouth-watering cut-on-the-board reveal? No. Problem was, I overcooked them. Notice my stupid ploy. In order to "rest", instead of pulling the meat off the grill, I piled the coals on the right to reduce the temp (and placed the grill grates over the co...

Sorry, Dave Leu! We don't even go out if the wind is over 7 mph!!! Haha!!! No, our troubles are on land. I mean, have you ever seen a three-wheeled boat trailer??? I hadn't either, until I watched my boat come out of the water this fine day. Linda at the wheel of the Suburban, me on the dock aligning the boat on the trailer... You see, we were "forced" up north because Burt Lake Marina was crafting a new cover for me. One that covered the entire bow (long story there) and well, the old one was worn. One week of boating, drop the boat off for fabrication and installation, then another couple days of boating at completion. Win, win, win, right??? Here's the new cover: So the launch at Walloon is directly behind that white vehicle by about 25 yards. That's the Hotel Walloon center-left. The boat is parked at the public launch parking lot. To get from the lot to the launch one must drive a short distance through the residential area. He...

One last postscript until I get back to... FOOD!!! I went out to examine the sunrise today. The weather has been funky and there were clouds. I might see something. I drove Linda's car as mine is still attached to the boat. Makes it a little less... maneuverable. Since nothing was happening in the sky, I went to... shoot the car. No Photoshop here, just Google Picasa... just after dawn. I wanted a soft, B&W, grainy sort of look...

I think my career, and family stuff, kept my photo interests at bay. I shot hundreds of frames at family get-togethers, and authorized hundreds more as the boat driver cannot take shots of kids on tubes crashing into each other. Well, should not. Things can get ugly out there!! This was 2008, frame number 257 on my new D80 Nikon. Ten years after I left a 25-year career in Lansing School District, and began work as an independent consultant. So fast-forward another decade, almost. 2017. My high school co-graduate, Rob Shipman, posts a shot he took on the Oregon coast.  I'm hooked again!! Two huge changes in just the last few months. First, Photoshop. I'd never really used it. Now James is teaching me, and I'm inspired. And Rob asked me if I was using Lightroom. I took that as a hint, researched it, and am now on day five of the 30-day trial. I'm sure I'll subscribe. And, change two, I shoot in RAW now. I know why. For a long time, with th...

I embarked on photography with Gary Hobbs, my college roomie and lifelong friend. He got darkroom gear from his grandfather. My folks had space in the basement for us to build a darkroom. Oh boy. Did we ever know nothing! Cheap-ass cameras, all manual. Box style. Argus, I think. Both of us somehow had one, as I recall. I did a Google picture search. This is more camera than I remember... more control. But it's certainly the same damn box: We somehow learned about ISO, which was ASA then, and EV, and shutter and aperture relationships. We also went blindly (ha ha) into the darkroom, buying developer, stop, and fixer. We had a dryer for the prints, a heated stainless steel surface with a canvas one would stretch over the polished surface to keep the prints from waffling and curling. In theory, of course. We printed all-black "photos", and all-white ones. We learned about film developing. And so on. And we went on "shoots". I remember one in Ro...